Quick Student food One pan

Butter and cheese pasta

Name: Butter and cheese pasta
Total time: 18 min
Yield: 2
Ingredients: 200 g Pasta; 40 g Butter; 80 g White cheese; 8 g Salt, per litre

Three ingredients. What makes the difference is not an ingredient but the ladle of cooking water you keep.

18 minTime

620Kcal / serving

1240Total kcal

Method

Salt the water at 7–10 g per litre and boil the pasta one minute short of the packet time.

Why It finishes that last minute in the pan with the sauce, and that is where its starch goes into the sauce.

Salt · 3.85% High. Osmosis is pulling water out, the texture is tightening and the flavour is closing.
Before draining, keep back a ladle of the cooking water.

Salt · 3.85% High. Osmosis is pulling water out, the texture is tightening and the flavour is closing.
Melt the butter in a pan, add the pasta and half the water and toss for a minute.

Why The starchy water builds an emulsion between fat and water, so the butter coats the pasta instead of running off it.

Salt · 3.23% High. Osmosis is pulling water out, the texture is tightening and the flavour is closing.

If you want a crust, do not stay under 140 °C. Food cooks at this heat but never colours.
Off the heat, crumble in the cheese and stir.

Why White cheese splits over direct heat, and the pan’s residual warmth is enough to melt it.

Salt · 3.05% High. Osmosis is pulling water out, the texture is tightening and the flavour is closing.

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

peak 120 °C · 12 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

2

Ingredients

200 g Pasta
40 g Butter
80 g White cheese
8 g Salt, per litre

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete

We hold no safety rule for this group that a dish could break — training, or an age, does not make food dangerous. The thresholds below are about the person rather than about the dish.

Not about the dish — about the person

Protein in a day

0.83 g/kg

An adult Context established

Per day, 0.83 g for every kilogram of body weight — about 58 g a day for somebody of 70 kg. This is a floor: the amount that prevents a shortfall, not an optimum.

European Food Safety Authority, Dietary Reference Values for protein, 2012

Salt in a day

5 g 2000 mg

An adult Context established

Under 5 g of salt a day, which is under 2000 mg of sodium — just under a teaspoon. A label usually gives sodium, and the two are not the same number: salt is about 2.5 times the sodium.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

Not on this site: The real subjects of sports nutrition are not on this site: meal timing, carbohydrate around training, fluid and electrolytes, supplements. The 0.83 g/kg above is EFSA's adult reference intake — the floor that prevents a shortfall, not an athlete's target. The 1.2-2.0 g/kg range often quoted for athletes is not written here, because its primary source could not be read in full from this environment and we do not put an unread number on a health page. The primary Turkish reference is the Ministry of Health's Türkiye Beslenme Rehberi (TÜBER) 2022. The calculated nutrition figures on these pages are estimates and are not a substitute for a plan.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Not suitable Pasta
Vegan Not suitable Butter, White cheese
Vegetarian Suitable if the label checks out The rennet may be animal; look for microbial rennet on the packet.
Lactose-free Suitable if the label checks out Strained or aged: most of the lactose is gone, but not all of it.
Diabetes-friendly It depends Quickly digested starch. Cooling it builds resistant starch, and fat, protein, fibre or acid alongside it flattens the curve.

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

Calculated nutrition

620 kcal
20 g Protein
75.3 g Carbohydrate
26.1 g Fat
3.2 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

Taste profile

What it tastes like

The axes that define this recipe: salty 33, richness 40.

Sweet 12
Salty 33
Sour 8
Bitter 8
Umami 22
Heat 0
Richness 40
Aroma 14

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity

Closest in taste

Not hand-picked: ranked by distance across the eight taste axes.

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